February 14th, 2013

Duke Nukem 3D: CODE LEGACY (PART 3 OF 4) >>

Build is an outstanding engine and the numerous games it powered brought very much deserved fame and fortune to both parties: Ken Silverman and 3D Realms.

Ken Silverman completed his contract: He delivered the binary of an astonishing 3D engine with well documented methods and assets formats. As a testimony of his skills, 3D Realms credited him with "Ken ' I can do that' Silverman".

But Build development was focused on features and performances, not portability or readability. Having read the code I believe open source developers stayed away from it because :

I have listed on this page a few of the difficulties I identified. I also released Chocolate Duke Nukem 3D a port that address those issues. Because I wanted people to remember what treasure of ingenuity it took to build a 3D engine back then. But also because I wanted people to understand how a teenager driven by passion contributed to one of the greatest game of all time.


Hard to understand

Hard to port


Lost ressources

Ken Silverman once kindly collaborated to the JonoF port and posted many explanation of his algorithms. Unfortunately the forum had to be taken down due to spam. It seems all those precious information are gone :( !


It is with disappointment that I've closed the forum on this site. Spam bots made it impossible to keep it under control, and although there is some valuable content within its posts, it's just not worth my or the other moderators' time to maintain it.

I suggest you head over to the Duke4.net forums if you want to remain involved in the community.


 

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